Te Tuhi is pleased to be showing the first large-scale presentation in Aotearoa New Zealand, of work by Wu Tsang. One emerging from a point of view, is a video work co-commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation and Onassis Fast Forward Festival 6 and was first shown at the Sharjah Biennale 14 in 2019.
In One emerging from a point of view, the artist continues an ongoing exploration of a ‘third’ space between two overlapping video projections, focusing on this overlap to create visual entanglement. As images cut and bleed into each other, two disparate narratives intertwine through synchronised camera choreography. Set recently on the northeastern shore of Lesbos, Greece, the work revolves around a scenario in which two women cross paths—although they never meet.
One is a young woman from Morocco (Yassmine Flowers), who arrives in Athens after many months of travel through Turkey and Lesbos’ Moria camp. The other is a photojournalist (Eirini Vourloumis) assigned to document the ‘crisis’, who becomes personally involved with the fishing village of Skala Sikamineas, where locals have been first responders to the mass influx of refugees coming mostly from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Africa. Since 2011, more than half a million refugees have crossed into Europe through the Greek island of Lesbos, located in the Northern Aegean Sea off the coast of Turkey.
Rather than attempt to document a ‘truth’, Tsang takes a magical realist approach as she works in collaboration with her subjects to create a hybrid fantasy. Drawing from history, mythology and science-fiction, her film situates the two parallel narratives within both real and imagined landscapes in order to tell the story of the island and the migration across interconnected and overlapping space and time.
One emerging from a point of view was originally produced with the generous support of Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Lafayette Anticipations – Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris, Polyeco Contemporary Art Initiative and Singapore Art Museum for Singapore Biennale 2019.
About Wu Tsang
Wu Tsang (born 1982 in Worcester, Massachusetts) is an award-winning filmmaker and performance artist. Her works explore hidden histories, marginalized narratives, and the act of performing itself. Tsang reimagines racialized, gendered representations beyond the visible frame to encompass the multiple and shifting perspectives through which we experience the social realm.
Wu Tsang has presented at museums and film festivals internationally, including La Biennale de Venezia, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern London, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among many other national and international venues. She has received grants from Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, and the MacArthur “Genius” Award. She is currently an artistic director in residence at the Schauspielhaus, Zurich.
Her most recent work Of Whales (2022) is an immersive video installation inspired by Herman Melville’s classic 1851 American novel Moby Dick; or, The Whale and premiered at the 59th La Biennale de Venezia in 2022. It has recently been exhibited at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA, Gropius Bau, Berlin and The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
Press
→ Review of One emerging from a point of view - Eye Contact